Tuesday, March 31, 2015

We’re back. Gail
and I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to take a one-week cruise around Cuba,
stopping for a day at each of five different ports. It was a Canadian-Greek
ship, the Louis Cristal, making its last Cuba Cruise of the season, probably
the first to include a small but significant number of passengers from the
United States.

We’re so glad we
did it, even though the heat and long, slow lines at immigration were pretty
taxing for this old man. I’ve always wanted to set foot in brave “little” Cuba,
to feel its legendary warmth, creativity, and musicality. It was only a week,
but one of the joys of a lifetime.

I’m not tempted
to expand this eye-blink of a trip into an “expert” commentary on Cuba. Our
interaction with Cubans on the ship and in a couple of the towns was more than
we anticipated. It was friendly, frank and relaxed. Frustration was openly
expressed, especially with restricted Internet access and arbitrary authority
over permission to travel. There was deep pride in culture and country, and in
the fact that government cares about people, about education, health, and
making sure that food supplies are available to the poor.

What shines
through all the negative propaganda in our country about Cuba is the miracle of
its survival and its remarkable record of humanitarian contributions. Most
recently, Cuban doctors and health personnel led the world in direct response
to Ebola in the most ravished African countries.

A personal
little side-story added to my experience on this trip. Way back around 1950,
when I was chair of the Labor Youth League, I met the leader of the Cuban youth
movement at a meeting in Mexico City. It was only for a few days, but we hit it
off and shared a lot of exciting conversation about our hopes for a better
world. His name was Flavio Bravo. We were never to meet again.

I Googled Flavio
before the cruise and found that he had been a leader in Cuba’s mission to save
Angola’s independence against a contra-style mercenary war. He later became the
head of the Cuban National Assembly. As far as I could tell he was still alive,
although he had to be a nonagenarian like me. I was hopeful, and I wrote him a
letter that a tour leader said she would try to have delivered.

A couple of days
later, a guide in Santiago de Cuba mentioned having served in Angola. We talked.
He said he served with “our leader”, Flavio Bravo. He described him in the warmest
terms, the way I remembered him so many years past. He told me Flavio’s parents
were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, among those who brought ideas of
Socialism to the Americas.

Sadly, Google’s
story was incomplete. Flavio died a few years ago. My new Cuban friend took my
sympathy note to give to Flavio’s family.

I can’t leave
off without mentioning the fellow-American passengers who became our good
buddies along the way. Surprising and so satisfying that friendship can blossom
in just a few days.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Remarkable! There could be no clearer
demonstration of the destructive psychology of “American exceptionalism” than
the way the negotiations with Iran are being viewed.

Of course, the most egregious
attitude, defiant of constitutional precedent and contemptuous of international
law, is in the letter of almost the entire GOP Senate majority to the Iranian
government. What the GOP ignores completely, the media treats as an occasional
footnote: France, Germany, Russia, China and Britain (the UN Security Council
+1) are vital participants in the negotiations and any hoped for agreement.
They too, not just Obama, would be wiped away by “the stroke of a pen” with
which the outlaw Senators promise to trash any agreement.

From hubris to humiliation,
the Senators had to be enlightened by the Iranian foreign minister. He
suggested that they misread and defied US constitutional proscriptions about
the conduct of foreign policy. No surprise that they also had to be informed about
international law. Apparently it doesn’t exist for them: war is the preferable
alternative to diplomacy and international cooperation.

Meanwhile
Democrats, including more than a few who have gone along with efforts to
sabotage the Iran negotiations, are offended by the brazen partisan behavior of
Netanyahu, Boehner and now the GOP Senators. It’s time to see this issue as far
beyond petty politics. It’s a matter of war or peace, one battle in the
existential fight for the future.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

The battle over
whether the Iran negotiations go forward or are forced to fail is bigger than
the terms of any “deal”. An agreement won’t decide any of the great issues of
our time, but it bears on which way the world will turn in this century.

The United
States, Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and Iran are at the table
negotiating a difficult issue. Sadly, that’s a rare phenomenon in a world torn
by chaotic violence, wars, big power rivalries, and fears of worse to come. Negotiations
and cooperation could be viewed as a sign of hope, one small step toward coming
together on humanity’s most unavoidable challenges: climate change and the threat
of nuclear war.

Why is Netanyahu
hysterical? Why is he rallying the GOP and a majority of Congressional Democrats
against Obama’s “bad deal”?

I don’t think it’s
only a ploy on the eve of Israeli elections. Nor is it a genuine fear of an
imminent or soon-to-be danger that Iran will bomb Israel. It’s more likely that
a nuclear-armed Israeli government, if run by expansionists and ultra-orthodox
“settlers”, would bomb Iran than the other way around.

What makes him
desperate is the threat that serious diplomacy poses to the policies and
ambitions of Israel’s extremist right wing government. The Iran negotiations
reveal a fissure between strategic interests of the United States and those of
Israel’s occupiers and expansionists. While virtually every politician in
America swears undying loyalty to Israel, and the armaments and money flow
unabated, there is considerable unease about constraining US policy according
to the desires of an increasingly ostracized Israeli government.

Incredibly,
Netanyahu never mentioned the “Palestinian problem”, but it was surely in his
calculations.The process of real negotiations,
especially involving a wide diversity of governments, runs completely counter
to the formulas that have sustained and expanded the occupation. Either Israel
could rely on the United States, its partner and chosen “mediator”, or it could
defy even the US negotiators by expanding settlements, building walls, or
countering resistance with indiscriminate military force.

Now the rest of
the world is beginning to play a significant part. Condemnation of apartheid,
boycotts, support for a Palestinian State cannot be dismissed. Despite
Netanyahu’s loud declarations in the name of “all Jews”, many Jews in the
United States and Israel are angered by his distortion of “Never Again” into a
justification for oppression and violence against others.

What about
Netanyahu’s Congressional audience, those who cheered him wildly and are ready,
at his bidding, to do their utmost to undercut Obama and doom the negotiations?

Some may know
not where the road leads; other Democrats may be offended, but are too
intimidated to protest. But here is the real menace: the spectacle that Boehner
sponsored was nothing less than the gathering of a war party that seeks full
control of US foreign and military policy.

US foreign
policy is and has been on a wrong and dangerous course. It remains driven by
the “American Century” delusion, the concept that the USA is and will always be
the sole superpower. Despite the many
failed wars and missions, there remains the faith that our colossal military
superiority and alliances such as NATO can ultimately prevail in securing
“world order” consistent with US interests and “exceptional” values. But this
changing world requires something different. None of the crises and hugely
difficult problems can be mitigated without putting common interests above
divisions of “friend or foe” dictated traditionally by conflict over spheres of
influence.

That’s another
whole story. But what happened this week in Washington is striking evidence
that it matters whether voices of sanity gain ground even in limited ways (eg
the Iran negotiations, recognition of Cuba, partial agreements on climate
change, easing tensions over the Ukraine) or if a “bipartisan” war party takes full
command of the controls.

Nothing could be worse — for us, for the Israelis and Palestinians. for the world — than a committed hawk as US President in axis with a Dr. Strangelove at the head of an ultra-right Israeli government.

About Me

Leon Wofsy is Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology / Immunology at the University of California at Berkeley. His career in science and academia began when he was almost forty years old. Earlier, for more than fifteen years, he was a leader of Marxist youth organizations. That experience began during the student upheavals at New York’s City College (CCNY) in the late 1930s, and encompassed the time of McCarthyism in the 1950s. He became a professor at UC Berkeley in 1964 just as the Free Speech Movement was about to erupt. He is the author of many scientific papers and articles on social issues. He edited a book on the Cold War, Before the Point of No Return (Monthly Review Press, 1986). His memoir, Looking for the Future (IW Rose Press, 1995) is available online in the Free Speech Movement Archives, Book Collection, UC Bancroft Library.